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“Are you done, Carine?” Heidi asked flatly.
“Am I done with what?”
“Are you done leaping to the worst possible conclusions? I had Clay get you out here, not because I’m in any hurry to tie you to a bench again and figure out newer and meaner ways to plump your clit, but because this is neutral territory for the two of us. I figured I’d come to this place, where I decided an age ago that I didn’t want to ever know about it if someone else was touching you, and tell you that you’ve won.”
“I win? Just what am I winning beyond a heap of confusion?”
“The honor and privilege of knowing that you were right, and I was wrong. You know as well as I do that doesn’t happen often, or if it does, I certainly don’t admit it. I ran scared partly because I didn’t want you to become a laughingstock because of me. You think I don’t know folks’ opinions? I know ’em. Every single one of them, but I never cared. After the divorce, Tim made me promise I was going to start being on the outside who I was on the inside. It didn’t seem to affect Kevin’s life one way or another, so I got used to being the eccentric lesbian everyone whispered about. I think that, in some ways, my personality is less accepted than my orientation, and I’ve gotten to slide a little on that. But it wouldn’t be like that for you. As quirky as you are, you’re not idiosyncratic. You’re not ‘disquieting and opaque.’ That’s one of the phrases I’ve been called. Your whispers would be…”
Her grimace was brief, but Carine caught it all the same.
“Theywillbe different. But my logic was that I loved you too much to drag you into that mess. I decided you deserved better than being whisper fodder for folks who are far too concerned with what happens in other people’s bedrooms. You have to work in this place. You have to make a living and network and forge honest connections. I let past interactions color my intentions, and I convinced myself that you’d eventually decide that being with me would drag you down.”
“Why would you think that?” Carine asked. “I sell mostly to out-of-towners. If they’re going to make a decision about a quarter- or half-million-dollar purchase based on me being with a Heidi instead of a Howard, Lord, help them. And don’t you get me started on that mess about me protecting my good name. That’s shit I’d expect to hear coming out of my mother’s mouth, not yours. I adore your personality, and I bet there are dozens of women around here who wish they were brave enough to tell you the same. That doesn’t even include the ones you’ve stuck your neck out for. Any one of them would probably go down to the boat factory tomorrow and ask to work with you if they’d thought you’d give them a shot. Prove me wrong. Call Mercy Hughes and see what she says. And anyway, I expect people to judge me by my actions, not by who I’m sleeping with.”
“Sleeping with someone is an action, Carine.”
Carine opened her mouth to argue with that logic, but on the fly, she couldn’t think of a response that would poke even the smallest of holes in it.
Butnothinghad been logical about her and Heidi being together. Before, Carine hadn’t considered Heidi an option, even when she was technically being one without knowing. On paper, the two of them didn’t match.
The problem with logic and lists of facts on paper was that neither accounted for the nebulous instincts that drew people together.
People bought houses all the time and said, “It’s all wrong, but I love it. I don’t know why.”
Carine had always understood that in those situations, people hadn’t actually known what they’d really needed. They’d only knew they’d found it.
Carine had found who she needed. They didn’t match, but they went together.
She would make it work just like those people made the houses they loved work.
She’d do it because she wouldn’t be happy any other way or with any other person.
